I am
standing and reading Oh the Places You’ll
Go by Dr. Seuss in a famous NYC bookstore near Union Square. I have been listening to the great organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the current song is “Joy of Man’s Desiring.” I just walked out of the bathroom and saw these two books on the table outside the doors. One of them was about loving New York and leaving it, and the other was The Alchemist, which I bought at this same bookstore during my first visit to NYC after the first time I left it. The bathrooms are on the second floor, so I was immediately greeted by some children's classics, including Dr. Seuss. Then the song kicked in as I picked up this book which I'm not sure I've ever read but I wish I had read before I set out on all of these journeys. Even so, the words rang completely true. In fact, I found the final lines of the book on a sign in Kings Canyon National Park last June one weekend when I was camping in California.
When I returned I watched a class taught by a teacher named Benjamin Franklin _____ (he always wrote his middle name on the board), which was Basic English and basically boring, even though he was energetic and friendly. Then I met a teacher from Albania for whom I had substituted when his wife was in the hospital. He was an older man who was very friendly. We were sitting in the café before class when he said with a smile, “I don’t know you very well and you don’t know me, but take it from me, you’re an educated American, you should be considering this job as temporary. It doesn’t pay well, and you can do something better. I have something else on the side and I’m older, and I’ve only done this a few years but you don’t want to do this as long as I have. I would look for other jobs if I were you.” Then he taught a very enthusiastic and fun class, and gave the students advice on how learning English will help them have better opportunities for jobs in their lives, and to always move forward and never go back. Those words hit home.
Culturally this job has been an expansion of my horizons and understanding of this world, because I am teaching many humans from countries and continents I had yet to encounter. But intellectually I have taken many steps backward, and I’ve been feeling it in other aspects of my life, such as trying to write. Even though it isn’t especially difficult, it drains a lot of energy to commute 70 minutes and then stand up in front of groups and explain things to non-native speakers and then walk around and try to help every single one of them write the correct grammatical sentences and point out their mistakes, with kindness and patience, utmost patience. Especially when some of them haven’t the faintest clue about what I just taught everyone no matter what we do, whereas others wish I would go faster because they learned this already. Everyone smiles and laughs, and I enjoy spreading knowledge and helping them, but I feel my energy slipping every single day. On top of that, I recently began teaching a Sunday class two levels lower than the rest of my classes, for four hours straight, and I find myself restless and wanting to express so much more every minute I’m in there.
Luckily, I have a lead on an SAT tutoring job that begins next month. I just have to retake the math portion to qualify, since they want absolute experts to teach these wealthy kids in the Connecticut and Westchester suburbs. I aced the reading portion and easily did well enough on the writing portion (although I hate the idea of teaching “standardized writing”), but I need to bump up my math 50 points to my original score from when I took the test as a high school student thirteen years ago, which would have been good enough to qualify. I interviewed a month ago and took the test which every student dreads for years, not having studied at all. I was on four hours of sleep and came directly from teaching all morning and without eating lunch. I’m amazed my brain didn’t explode during the math problems because I hadn’t done complicated math since I left high school eleven years ago. I'm lucky I did as well I did. If I want more money per hour and thus more flexibility in my schedule, I have to start studying math SAT questions again, which couldn’t be further from my intellectual purpose in this world. But you gotta do what you gotta do, especially if you want to move off your friend’s couch and into an apartment, any kind of apartment, so long as it has a bed in a private room.
Anyway, that was Wednesday. Thursday was my mother’s birthday, so I listened to Mozart all day, because he's her favorite, and it put a lift in my step. Tomorrow is my great friend Brad’s birthday. I'm not sure if he likes any classical composers, but I'll continue the trend anyway, as Chopin, Beethoven and Grieg have kept me in the spirit of the season. I think it's because my mom always used to play classical music around the holidays, and it's been snowing so much lately, which I love, because it's been a long time. The season of snow brings wonderful people into my world. Today reminds me that the Earth is full of fantastic friends and family.
I put
down the book and continue to browse. I
usually love browsing bookstores, but today I’m having trouble finding what I’m
looking for. It’s both my sister’s and
her husband’s birthday today, and in one week I will be seeing them both for
the first time in two years. We always
get each other books, but I don’t know what she’s read lately, and I don’t want
to impose my tastes on her. I’m also
thinking of getting something for myself because I haven’t read a book in a
while, which is ironic since I’m writing a book, but I think that explains
it. If I’m going to read something I run
the risk of having it interfere with my voice, and even if I take that risk, it
better be a great book that is aligned with what I’m trying to express. Too many books are simply depressing and
tragic. I’m writing about some
depressing things, but also some beautiful amazing awesome experiences, and the
purpose isn’t to bring people down but to pull them up. I will be hard-pressed to do so if I’m
letting a different author bring me down. Which means I am very picky as I peruse the tables which I hope will one day soon contain some pages penned by my own person.
Eventually
I see Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I quoted that book in a post I wrote about my
sister and her husband in June, because they’re all German-based. I pick up the copy and notice that the
introduction is by my favorite author, Tom Robbins! Even stranger, the translation is by Susan
Bernofsky, who was my sister’s adviser at Bard College. We had dinner at her Brooklyn apartment a few
years ago when my sister and her husband were visiting the city during their yearly
vacation to the US. But my sister isn’t
really a Hesse fan, and I already have it, so I don’t buy it. But Robbins' introduction is excellent, and I really need that right now.
Around
the time of that same visit where we dined with a woman who would one day translate a new version of one of the most respected literary masterpieces about spiritual seeking which also happens to include an introduction by my literary hero, I received a very important book. Folke, my sister’s husband, gave me the Walter
Moers book The City of Dreaming Books,
about a young dinosaur braving the dangerous publishing city to find the anonymous
author of the greatest piece of writing his dying professor had ever received. I sampled it Thursday, December 12, which is my mother's birthday. At the time I originally received it I was working in publishing, and I actually read it half a year later after my first attempt at a book. I read most of it while answering phones at some fashion magazine company, one of many temporary assignments that spring.
When I was in San Francisco I went to the
Excelsior Library to check out my first books as a California resident and noticed
that there was a new sequel called The
Labyrinth of Dreaming Books. I
remember reading it in my empty room by the 101 freeway, completely devoid of
furniture except for a small camping mat, sleeping bag, small travel-size
pillow and a shoddy creaky wardrobe my roommate found on the street but couldn’t
fit in his room after he asked two of us to help him carry it all the way down
the hill and up the stairs, and thus ended up in my room. I’d spent the week typing letters to friends
and trudging back and forth to the post office to print them out and mail them
the old-fashioned way. I finished the
Moers book on a Friday night with a candle burning. It’s a cliff-hanger merely written to prepare
the reader for the third book in the trilogy.
It ends with an author’s note concluding, “This is where the story
begins. Everything hitherto has been a
prelude.”
The
reason I was at this bookstore was actually a whim. It had been snowing all day, and I had braved
the elements in search of a pillow. I’d
left the travel-sized pillow--which I’d used that first month in San Francisco
and while camping all over America--at home for Thanksgiving, and asked my mom
to mail it to me, and it is currently still floating around in a box somewhere
in America, weeks later. After two weeks
of sleeping with rolled up shirts under my head and a pillow case draped on top,
I have decided I deserve a pillow. On
the way to get the pillow I completely wiped out on the sidewalk because I
misjudged the curb, and hilariously fell on my side. I bounced back up and was able to laugh at
myself, as I hadn’t wiped out in the snow in who knows how long, since I haven’t
been around snow in two years (not counting the top of Pyramid Peak in
Washington a year ago).
After purchasing the pillow I was
steps from my friend’s apartment when I saw two people shoveling the front
steps, and I realized they must be the landlords who my friend warned me to
never enter the apartment with my copied keys in front of, because they don’t
know I’m here. So I kept walking with my
pillow in a plastic bag that said Fantasy on the side, because that’s the store
where I purchased it. I’d been thinking
of heading downtown to do a little shopping anyway, so I figured I might as
well just go then and bring the pillow with me and the landlords would be gone
when I got back.
So I
waited at the 46th street stop for about ten minutes for the train
to come. That gave me plenty of time to
try to activate my imagination. Three years ago I was in San Francisco, walking around and taking pictures, and preparing for my 3 am flight to Mexico City and the pyramids the next morning. I was happy I had survived such a strange journey through the South and been helped by so many strangers through couch surfing and hitchhiking.
I stared ahead at the 46th Street station sign: 46 chromosomes in the human body, 4/6 was “Shine Your Light” writing… I looked to the left of me and saw a Santa Claus. There were many out today. Two years ago on this day I was teaching kindergarten in Japan and dressed up like Santa Claus, but the kids could see through my beard and called me “Ben Claus.”
I looked to my left and saw a sign that says Newtown Road. One year ago today I was sitting in a room in San Francisco and writing all about American culture, trusting the strangest people as I hitchhiked to Las Vegas, hanging out with Japanese musicians and looking at pictures from risky travels around the world, seeing Hiromi play an excellent show in Tokyo, and teaching adults and kindergartners in Japan. I thought I had the workings of my first novel/creative memoir. 50 pages on a whim after a few days weren’t bad at all. I hadn’t been outside all day because I’d been writing. Right before my walk I checked the New York Times and saw that there had been a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and not only that, but it was at an elementary school. This reminded me of school stabbings by mentally insane adults in China which I had read about while teaching children in Japan, so I searched it online and it turned out there had been another one the same day. A week or two ago there were reports saying that the American killer hadn’t left his room for weeks and was basically completely cut off from humanity, loving only his guns and his plan of putting them to what he considered to be good use.
Today’s not a day to expound on that though, because for 28 of my 29 years, it has been a glorious celebration of my only sister entering this world and spreading messages of understanding, tolerance, embracing differences and overcoming them to connect. And for the past 8 years I’ve been able to celebrate her boyfriend/fiancé/husband’s coming into this world on the exact same day. Besides, I think about Newtown a little bit every day. Every morning I walk down Newtown Road to get to the 46th Street subway, because it’s the most direct route. Even if I arrive back on the N train at 30th Avenue, you still see the sign where it intersects 33rd Street. They’re selling Christmas trees there now, with big inflatable Santa's and elves. I love Christmas trees. Sometime I hope the Christians get the right idea and replace the cross with a Christmas tree so that we can think about the beauty of life growing and blooming as opposed to being chopped down and employed as weapons to torture and murder beautiful people. But I digress.
I stared ahead at the 46th Street station sign: 46 chromosomes in the human body, 4/6 was “Shine Your Light” writing… I looked to the left of me and saw a Santa Claus. There were many out today. Two years ago on this day I was teaching kindergarten in Japan and dressed up like Santa Claus, but the kids could see through my beard and called me “Ben Claus.”
I looked to my left and saw a sign that says Newtown Road. One year ago today I was sitting in a room in San Francisco and writing all about American culture, trusting the strangest people as I hitchhiked to Las Vegas, hanging out with Japanese musicians and looking at pictures from risky travels around the world, seeing Hiromi play an excellent show in Tokyo, and teaching adults and kindergartners in Japan. I thought I had the workings of my first novel/creative memoir. 50 pages on a whim after a few days weren’t bad at all. I hadn’t been outside all day because I’d been writing. Right before my walk I checked the New York Times and saw that there had been a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and not only that, but it was at an elementary school. This reminded me of school stabbings by mentally insane adults in China which I had read about while teaching children in Japan, so I searched it online and it turned out there had been another one the same day. A week or two ago there were reports saying that the American killer hadn’t left his room for weeks and was basically completely cut off from humanity, loving only his guns and his plan of putting them to what he considered to be good use.
Today’s not a day to expound on that though, because for 28 of my 29 years, it has been a glorious celebration of my only sister entering this world and spreading messages of understanding, tolerance, embracing differences and overcoming them to connect. And for the past 8 years I’ve been able to celebrate her boyfriend/fiancé/husband’s coming into this world on the exact same day. Besides, I think about Newtown a little bit every day. Every morning I walk down Newtown Road to get to the 46th Street subway, because it’s the most direct route. Even if I arrive back on the N train at 30th Avenue, you still see the sign where it intersects 33rd Street. They’re selling Christmas trees there now, with big inflatable Santa's and elves. I love Christmas trees. Sometime I hope the Christians get the right idea and replace the cross with a Christmas tree so that we can think about the beauty of life growing and blooming as opposed to being chopped down and employed as weapons to torture and murder beautiful people. But I digress.
Anyway,
I didn't buy anything at the bookstore but did buy some printer paper in Union Square so my students' can print lyrics to songs for next week's music story class, because it's the last week and we finished the book. Now I'm writing this at home. It’s been a good day off, walking through the
snow, heating up my car so it doesn’t freeze, and buying necessities. I have to work again tomorrow. I used to have three day weekends in
California, so I guess it would be hypocritical to complain, but one day off
isn’t enough. At least I have a pillow now.
That
being said, it was actually a good week.
I had to observe other teachers for ten hours, a requirement that wasn’t
fulfilled at the beginning because they saw I could teach and kept asking me to
substitute for other teachers anyway.
But then they remembered it and reminded me, so I got it all out of the
way this week. I didn’t like coming in an hour
early, but it was good to remember the perspective of watching the teacher from
a chair so I could get a sense of what the students see when they’re watching
me.
On
Wednesday I stayed in the evening to watch four classes, which meant there was a
two hour gap in the middle. During the
afternoon class we read a story about a king who worked in a nursing home. There was an African king who ruled 300,000
people and came to the US to study, sponsored by the larger government which
enclosed his kingdom, and then there was a revolt and he lost all of his
financing and had to get a job. So he
became a nurse’s aide for 22 years, and nobody knew he was actually a king
until he got invited back by a new government.
He’s using the compassion he learned as an aide to help his people, many
of whom do not have running water or paved roads.
I used
that story as inspiration to finally check out the nearest library, which is
called Kingsbridge Library. It’s a 40
minute walk, and I had two hours before my evening observations, so after eating a sandwich I walked
along Valentine Road to Edgar Allen Poe Park which connected to East
Kingsbridge Road. I followed that to
West Kingsbridge Road, and finally made it to the library only to realize I
didn’t bring my proof of residence/employment with me and would need to go to a
different branch some other time. It was a nice walk though, and I got to explore the Bronx some more on a cold crisp sunny day. I wouldn't have my December's any other way.
When I returned I watched a class taught by a teacher named Benjamin Franklin _____ (he always wrote his middle name on the board), which was Basic English and basically boring, even though he was energetic and friendly. Then I met a teacher from Albania for whom I had substituted when his wife was in the hospital. He was an older man who was very friendly. We were sitting in the café before class when he said with a smile, “I don’t know you very well and you don’t know me, but take it from me, you’re an educated American, you should be considering this job as temporary. It doesn’t pay well, and you can do something better. I have something else on the side and I’m older, and I’ve only done this a few years but you don’t want to do this as long as I have. I would look for other jobs if I were you.” Then he taught a very enthusiastic and fun class, and gave the students advice on how learning English will help them have better opportunities for jobs in their lives, and to always move forward and never go back. Those words hit home.
Culturally this job has been an expansion of my horizons and understanding of this world, because I am teaching many humans from countries and continents I had yet to encounter. But intellectually I have taken many steps backward, and I’ve been feeling it in other aspects of my life, such as trying to write. Even though it isn’t especially difficult, it drains a lot of energy to commute 70 minutes and then stand up in front of groups and explain things to non-native speakers and then walk around and try to help every single one of them write the correct grammatical sentences and point out their mistakes, with kindness and patience, utmost patience. Especially when some of them haven’t the faintest clue about what I just taught everyone no matter what we do, whereas others wish I would go faster because they learned this already. Everyone smiles and laughs, and I enjoy spreading knowledge and helping them, but I feel my energy slipping every single day. On top of that, I recently began teaching a Sunday class two levels lower than the rest of my classes, for four hours straight, and I find myself restless and wanting to express so much more every minute I’m in there.
Luckily, I have a lead on an SAT tutoring job that begins next month. I just have to retake the math portion to qualify, since they want absolute experts to teach these wealthy kids in the Connecticut and Westchester suburbs. I aced the reading portion and easily did well enough on the writing portion (although I hate the idea of teaching “standardized writing”), but I need to bump up my math 50 points to my original score from when I took the test as a high school student thirteen years ago, which would have been good enough to qualify. I interviewed a month ago and took the test which every student dreads for years, not having studied at all. I was on four hours of sleep and came directly from teaching all morning and without eating lunch. I’m amazed my brain didn’t explode during the math problems because I hadn’t done complicated math since I left high school eleven years ago. I'm lucky I did as well I did. If I want more money per hour and thus more flexibility in my schedule, I have to start studying math SAT questions again, which couldn’t be further from my intellectual purpose in this world. But you gotta do what you gotta do, especially if you want to move off your friend’s couch and into an apartment, any kind of apartment, so long as it has a bed in a private room.
Anyway, that was Wednesday. Thursday was my mother’s birthday, so I listened to Mozart all day, because he's her favorite, and it put a lift in my step. Tomorrow is my great friend Brad’s birthday. I'm not sure if he likes any classical composers, but I'll continue the trend anyway, as Chopin, Beethoven and Grieg have kept me in the spirit of the season. I think it's because my mom always used to play classical music around the holidays, and it's been snowing so much lately, which I love, because it's been a long time. The season of snow brings wonderful people into my world. Today reminds me that the Earth is full of fantastic friends and family.
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